SALT LAKE CITY — At this point, the story of how Royce O’Neale went from playing in Europe to being the last player to make the Utah Jazz’s roster in 2017 to getting the responsibility of defending some of the NBA’s best players in the playoffs has been oft-told.
But as O’Neale gets ready to enter his third season with the Jazz, it’s fair to think he could become an even more crucial piece of head coach Quin Snyder’s rotation as Utah looks to become a real contender in the Western Conference.
Through a little less than two weeks of training camp, a number of people have pointed to O’Neale as a player who got better over the summer, and there’s good reason to think the 6-foot-6, 226-pound 26-year-old could even start at “power forward.”
“I’ll never get comfortable. I always want to keep getting better, be the best person I can, best player I can, so I’m going to fight every day, fight for the team.” — Utah Jazz forward Royce O’Neale
O’Neale’s good friend Donovan Mitchell is one of the people who has praised O’Neale. The Jazz’s star assessed early in camp that, “Royce has been phenomenal on both sides of the ball. Royce for sure has been a guy who’s really picked it up.”
Mitchell noted how O’Neale has especially become better at making reads on the offensive end, something that was on display in Utah’s preseason opener against the Adelaide 36ers, as the Baylor product tallied six assists to go along with 12 points and a rebound.
After the contest against Adelaide, Snyder said, “I want him to be aggressive. I also want him to make the right reads, and that’s what he did tonight. ... Usually when you attack the rim with a lot of force, you find yourself in situations where if you can’t get all the way to the basket, you’re able to find other people, and I think that’s something he spent a lot of time on.”
As much as O’Neale might become more of a weapon offensively this season, the defensive end of the floor will still surely be his calling card, and he said he’s “real comfortable” being tasked with guarding some of the world’s best scorers.
That is a big reason why it’s been a talking point throughout the preseason that he might end up in the starting lineup. Against all-star guards and wings, the Jazz need a lockdown defender, a role O’Neale has shown he can fill. Additionally, although he’s improving offensively, O’Neale doesn’t need the ball in the same way Mitchell or Bojan Bogdanovic do, so he balances well with them on that end of the floor.
After coming off the bench in Utah’s first two preseason games, O’Neale did indeed start at power forward on Friday night in the Jazz’s 128-127 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans, where he was tasked with defending rookie phenom Zion Williamson.
O’Neale finished with 16 points in 23 minutes on 6-of-8 shooting (4-of-6 from behind the 3-point line) to go along with three assists, two rebounds, a steal and a blocked shot.
While O’Neale is comfortable guarding elite scorers, his use of that word stands in contrast to how he feels about the prospects this season of having a markedly more sure place on Utah’s roster compared to two years ago, when he had to sweat out whether he or former Weber State star Joel Bolomboy would make the team.
“I’ll never get comfortable,” he said after the game against Adelaide. “I always want to keep getting better, be the best person I can, best player I can, so I’m going to fight every day, fight for the team.”
At the Jazz’s media day on Sept. 30, forward Georges Niang gave some insight into why the soft-spoken O’Neale has become such an important player for the Jazz.
“I don’t know if there’s anybody that works as hard as Royce,” Niang said. “He’s one of the most competitive dudes that I’ve been around. For a guy, his journey, I think he embraces every challenge that comes his way. I’ve never seen him back down from James Harden, LeBron James, Kawhi Leonard, any of those guys.”